13th of March 2024, EIP-4844 upgrade is released… reducing network fees and removing bandwidth bottlenecks for scaling the Ethereum ecosystem via L2 networks. The road is now paved for onchain applications to proliferate past the economic bottlenecks that prohibited exploration prior, enabling the application layer to utilize the immutable, transparent properties that blockchain technology provides in new and innovative ways to deliver community value.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Representations of community alignment, a cultural shift in the way we identify with our tribes in a digital world. Not unlike boutique watch collections, designer handbags or exotic automobiles, NFTs provide a social signaling that messages alignment on some level to a particular vertical of interest. It is human to seek belonging in those who share like minded ideologies and the success of NFTs throughout popular culture should not be a surprising one. In a world where intrinsic and extrinsic value is converging at a rapid pace, the desire for a sense of belonging persists.
The challenge to date, is forming and subsequently ossifying community ideology and values in a race against market timing and value appreciation - only the strong survive. Barring a few outliers (Bored Apes, Pudgy Penguins, NeoTokyo Citizens etc) existing communities are largely disorganized and lack a social graph that has continuity for long term value alignment outside that of monetary gain. Traversing this period is of paramount importance to the survival of the community. Floor prices, collection distribution and volume metrics are largely misleading (for a variety of reasons) when assessing community alignment, however in a world without a universally recognized platform, these unfortunately become the benchmark for engagement.
Ostensibly, communities thrive on the alignment toward shared victories, particularly when those victories are objectively measured by a universal understanding of what ‘success’ is. This can be observed throughout history in many ways and across varying levels of what one would deem ‘importance’ (however subjective that may be). From political alignment, to competitive sports, all the way down to device manufacturers, we seek the shared success of those ideologically aligned to our values with an objective proof point of our view being more ‘valid’ or provable than another.
Take the example of competitive sports, fans unite behind their team's quest for championships.This shared pursuit fosters deep connections and strengthens the social graph between the members, ossifying generations of family loyalty. In most cases, this simply occurs due to residing in a similar geographical location and nothing more. Interesting, no? Thousands of fans unite in support of a common cause establishing an underlying understanding between each other of loyalty in the shared pursuit of a common goal. The sense of shared victory not only reinforces community bonds but also drives broader cultural and economic impacts, to betray the common goal (switch teams for example, player or supporter) results in immediate ostracization from the social graph. It is important to recognize the importance of retaining alignment to the collective, as without it the goal becomes unreachable. But in absence of a universal platform to demonstrate individual alignment, how does a community begin to form the type of loyalty in order to traverse itself to ossification of values?
In the coming weeks across a series of articles, we will outline how the BaseBrawl Protocol will extend the value layer of existing NFT collections by leveraging a substrate for community alignment and competition defined by a universal view on competitive success, supporting the ossification of community values.
More to come…